LONDON (Reuters) - Whitbread L:WTB, owner of Britain's Premier Inn hotel and Costa Coffee chains, posted a better-than-expected 16.5 percent rise in full-year profit on Tuesday and said trading in the first two months of its new year had started well.
Britain's biggest hotel and coffee shop operator, which also runs pub restaurants such as Brewers Fayre, said underlying pretax profit for the year to Feb. 27 grew to 411.8 million pounds ($692.16 million), up 16.5 percent on a year ago and ahead of analyst forecasts of 402 million pounds.
Total revenue rose 13 percent to almost 2.3 billion pounds, helped by new store and hotel openings and solid underlying UK sales growth at Premier Inn and Costa. The group hiked its full-year dividend by 19.9 percent to 68.80 pence.
(Reporting by Neil Maidment; editing by Sarah Young)